Review: Wagner And MacNeil Return To Supersurf — In A Way — With The Magnificent ‘Surfer’

 

John Wagner and Colin MacNeil return to the world of skysurfing, something they have a fine history of, with a new, instant classic tale taking to the skies – Surfer.

Both gents’ history with skysurfing goes back a long way. Wagner co-created the character of Marlon Shakespeare, Chopper, and the whole sport of skysurfing in the pages of Dredd. MacNeil would later join Wagner on Chopper in ‘Soul on Fire‘ and ‘Song of the Surfer‘. And then they went on to create one of the definitive Dredd epics, America.

And now they’re back, back in the world of Dredd, back in the world of skysurfing, as near as you can get to a Chopper sequel without it actually starring Chopper. And make no mistake, this is two creators deeply embedded in the world of MC-1 who know exactly how to make Surfer work.

 

Instead of Chopper, we have Zane Perks, a young kid in love with skysurfing, his parents both former pros who gave him a love of being on the board. Mom’s gone now, killed surfing is the inference, and dad’s a drunk, borrowing money off the mob, something that will come back to bite both him and Zane later on in the storyline. Zane’s great on the board, a natural, loving the feeling of being up there on his own, just him and the board, that sense of freedom.

Now obviously, we know that the teaming of Wagner and MacNeil works beautifully, as we’ve seen repeatedly on their Dredd stories. But Surfer is something different, a Dreddworld tale that does a simple thing, a 100+ pages of absolutely perfect tight storytelling and, perhaps even more impressive, a writer stepping back to let his artist’s skill shine. Just like this…

 

Because although it’s a magnificently well-written Wagner tale, full of the sort of storytelling that makes any and every Dredd he writes essential, the real brilliance here is that Wagner’s written in such a way to let MacNeil’s art fly just as high, just as well, as Zane Perks flies on his board.

Those two pages are everything I’m going to be banging on about again and again here, the kinetic art, the way MacNeil elongates the panels to indicate speed, until we’re going all out on that second page with Zane flying down to rescue the faller – brilliance.

Wagner sets things up so that every few pages we get the chance to see Zane fly, with MacNeil’s big panels, utilising a hell of a lot of fully across the page horizontal and fully or near fully down the page vertical panels that really giving us the sense of the sheer excitement of skysurfing or the sheer terror of the chase from the law.

It’s the sort of artwork that makes you actually slow your reading to take in every flowing motion on the page, thrilling in slow motion to everything that MacNeil is doing so perfectly.

And then there’s the Mega-City skyline and cityscape – I don’t think anyone’s done it this good for many a year. MacNeil just uses Zane’s surfing to take us on a tour of the unusual places, complete with unusual artistic angles – again, just like this…

 

That mix of Wagner’s stripped-back narration and MacNeil’s sumptuous cityscapes – just perfection.

And all of that, the action sequences, the flying, the cityscape, Wagner playing to his artist and his artist absolutely excelling – it’s there all the way through Surfer. When you see Zane flying to the audition, when we see him ace said audition, on his way back and the run-in with the Bloodsuckers skysurf gang, and the subsequent incredible rescue of the Bloodsuckers’ leader thanks to a near-impossible bit of surfing – this is MacNeil’s book at these points, with Wagner happily stepping back and letting the artist do everything he knows he’s capable of. And MacNeil delivers everything you’d expect and so much more.

You can see it in every single page and panel sequence that I’m showing you through this review. That MacNeil art on page after page is just sublime, perfection in how to show incredible action in comics. Frankly, it’s what’s known as a masterclass.

 

As far as the plot goes, we’re talking a tale of two halves.

The first concerns Zane getting a job playing Chopper in a film company’s recreation of Supersurf 7. It’s an absolute thriller of a thing, especially once the recreation of Supersurf 7, complete with the actors playing Judges along the route proves to be a complete lie spun by the director. Suddenly, it’s all way too real and it’s all too deadly. But damn, those Supersurf flying scenes are incredible.

 

The second half of the book takes place after Zane gets out from the cubes for running from a Judge earlier and escaping the Judges rounding up the rogue surfers. After a great bit of Wagner comedy with the appeals Judge sees Zane back out on the streets, he’s now caught up in his dad’s mess with mob boss Snarky, and the only way out of it is to pick up Snarky’s drugs from Canadia and smuggle them back into the city. So the second half turns into a big of a crime thriller with Zane the innocent man getting caught up in other’s messes. And again, as you’d expect and, after that first half, hope, Wagner writes in plenty of skysurfing action for MacNeil to go large on.

Basically, Surfer’s just 100 pages of low-key Wagner writing, all tense and taut and economical and quite brilliant – as always. But it’s also 100 pages of a writer knowing his artist and an artist absolutely delighting in the space to show what he can do.

It’s a perfect little Dreddworld adventure that you definitely need to add to the reading list.

 

SURFER – VOLUME 1 – by John Wagner and Colin MacNeil, colurs by Chris Blythe, letters by Annie Parkhouse and Simon Bowland. Cover by Stewart K Moore.

Out now from 2000 AD/Rebellion

Originally published in Judge Dredd Megazine #439-444, #449-454